“Shake your chains to earth like dew – Ye are many – They are few”

Welcome to Bizarro Congress. The past six months have been stuffed chockfull of triumphs and disappointments for the Democratic Party: bills denouncing the Iraq War, bills prolonging the Iraq War, bills calling the troops home, bills providing the funds to keep the troops in Iraq for up to three more years. The strange news? They’re all the same bill.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. announced that he will be holding a full committee hearing next week titled, “The Use and Misuse of Presidential Clemency Power for Executive Branch Officials.” The hearing will be held next Wednesday, July 11, at 10:15 am in the committee’s hearing room, 2141 Rayburn House Office Building.

In a troubling sign for the American-financed rebuilding program in Iraq, inspectors for a federal oversight agency have found that in a sampling of eight projects that the United States had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle.

“Congress must have this information in order to carry out its constitutional oversight responsibilities,” Representative Ike Skelton of Missouri, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said in a letter.

But the Democrats have other areas where they could exercise oversight and demand accountability from senior White House officials.

For instance, if Plame-gate special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald doesn’t indict Vice President Dick Cheney in a criminal cover-up, the time may have come for hardball congressional hearings on Cheney’s role — and Bush’s.

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"You are not your bank account. You are not the clothes you wear. You are not the contents of your wallet. You are not your bowel cancer. You are not your grande latte. You are not the car you drive. You are not your fucking khakis… I say, let me never be complete. I say, may I never be content. I say, deliver me from Swedish furniture. I say, deliver me from clever art. I say, deliver me from clear skin and perfect teeth… I say, evolve, and let the chips fall where they may." ~Chuck Palahniuk